Axiata, valued at close to $19 billion and with a cash pile
of $2.8 billion, is expanding in the fast-growing Asian telecoms
sector as Jamaludin nips at the heels of Southeast Asian market
leader Singapore Telecommunications Ltd and India's
Bharti Airtel Ltd.

Its expansion comes at a time of surging demand for
smartphones as Asian consumers' spending power grows and
relatively untapped economies such as Myanmar and Laos open up
for business. Consumers in the seven major Southeast Asian
countries spent nearly $14 billion on mobile phones in the year
to September, according to market research firm GfK Asia.
Smartphone sales surged 78 percent.

Axiata, which already has more than 200 million subscribers,
agreed last month to pay around $155 million for Cambodia's
Latelz Co Ltd, creating the country's No.2 mobile firm with 5
million subscribers.

"That's a good reflection of what we intend to do,"
Jamaludin told Reuters at Axiata's headquarters in Kuala Lumpur
late on Tuesday. "It can be a small company, it can be a
relatively large company. Generally what we would like to do is
consolidation."

INORGANIC GROWTH

Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia - where Axiata spent
more than half its record 5.4 billion ringgit ($1.8 billion)
capital expenditure last year - were the most likely candidates
for similar deals, Jamaludin said.

"That's the inorganic expansion. Of course, there are
opportunities for new countries but in reality there's very few
left," said the 53-year-old, who started his career as a
lecturer in quantitative methods at California State University.
He joined Axiata in 2008 from Malaysian telco Maxis Bhd
.

Axiata - whose biggest shareholder is Malaysia's investment
arm Khazanah Nasional Bhd - hopes to enter Myanmar,
whose political opening has brought into play a new market of
around 60 million people with the world's second-lowest
cellphone penetration after North Korea.

But the lure of tapping one of Asia's last frontier markets
has attracted a host of potential bidders, including Digicel
and Norway's Telenor, for the two telecoms
licenses Myanmar plans to offer to foreign operators. Five or
six of the bidders were "really aggressive," Jamaludin said.

"It's going to be a tough one, a very tough one."

VIETNAM, INDONESIA

In contrast, Jamaludin said Axiata had little interest in
entering Vietnam, which he said was an "anti-climax" after
widespread excitement over its potential a few years ago. "They
have a high level of penetration, so the attractiveness has gone
down dramatically," he said.

Listed in 2008, Axiata shares last week hit a life high of
6.87 ringgit, and rose 28 percent last year, almost treble the
increase in the broader Bursa Malaysia index. SingTel
shares rose less than 8 percent.

Born from the 2008 demerger of TM International and Telekom
Malaysia Bhd, Axiata already has controlling interests
in operations in Indonesia through XL Axiata, Sri
Lanka's Dialog Axiata and Bangladesh's Robi Axiata, as
well as its Cambodian business. It has minority interests in
Singapore's M1, India's Idea Cellular,
Pakistan's Multinet and Thailand's Samart i-Mobile.

Jamaludin said there was increasing competition between
cellphone firms in Indonesia, where robust growth is propelling
millions of people into a bulging new middle class. Axiata
doubled its spending on Indonesia last year and would invest
another "big sum" this year, he said.

"Everybody can see it's a big opportunity and this is the
time to go for it. Smaller players have also decided to up the
ante, whereas in a lot of the other countries the smaller
players are getting more quiet," he said.

Jamaludin said Axiata had no plans to copy SingTel, which
has embarked on a drive to acquire high-tech firms to transform
itself into a multimedia and information technology leader. The
company bought Israeli mobile advertising solutions firm Amobee
Inc last year for $321 million.

"We decided we do (it) more cautiously," Jamaludin said. "We
want to do something which is more incremental and adding value
to existing business, leveraging on our customer base,
leveraging on our network, our brand and so forth rather than
building a new one."

Axiata trades at almost 19 times its projected earnings,
well above SingTel's 13.9 times and the average Asia Pacific
sector multiple of 12.6 times. Of 29 analysts tracking Axiata,
19 rate it a 'buy' or 'strong buy', with a single 'underperform'
rating.

Cash flow from operations was at 2.67 billion ringgit at
end-September, more than three times net income of 710 million
ringgit.